Chapter 20
The full moon brought a change in the weather. Clouds began to roll in from the west, and by morning the glowering sky was heavy with the threat of rain. But Prince Rupprecht did not regard this as an ill omen. Although it would be many hours before the first reports from the front could reach his headquarters, he had risen early in his impatience to begin the triumphant day. Already he could hear the rumble of guns massed along the Arras front, and he was perfectly confident of achieving the victory that might well finish the war. In the hours of waiting he wrote in his diary, ‘We stand immediately before the success of the final breakthrough.’
Prince Rupprecht was far behind the lines, and the army group he commanded held the ground as far north as Ostend on the Belgian coast, but it was the Seventeenth Army of his left wing, under General von Below, which was to make the assault. North of Arras, on the extreme right of von Below’s push, the front had been comparatively quiet and the British troops of the 56th Division were, at worst, still in the forward battle zone or even in the outpost line. Fourteen miles south of them, and eight miles beyond Arras, the 31st Division would be facing von Below’s army on the extreme left of his attack.
The 31st Division had a chequered history. Most of its original members were from the north of England. They called them ‘Kitchener’s men’, but in 1914 the majority were little more than boys who had enlisted on a wave of feverish patriotism, fired by the irresistible prospect of ‘having a go at the Hun’. They were a tight-knit group. Friends and neighbours, brothers, workmates, whole troops of Rover Scouts, even local football teams with their attendant supporters, had rushed to join the Army. It was not for nothing that they were called ‘The Pals Battalions’. To the horror of the country – and of the Army – the Pals had met with disaster on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and the old ranks were sadly diluted by fresh intakes of reinforcements. There was a small proportion of originals left, but many battalions had been amalgamated or disbanded in the recent shake-up, and a whole brigade had been removed and replaced by three battalions of the Guards. But, in the twenty-one months since its ordeal on the Somme, the 31st Division had earned its spurs, and the men were no longer innocents.
It was barely a year since Walter Hare had joined the Division, after just five months’ training, but he had learned a thing or two in the interval, even before he heard a shot fired in anger.
37468 Private Walter Hare, 15th Bn., West Yorkshire Regt., 31st Division
The sort of training we did wasn’t a scrap of use to us when we got to France, because the only thing we learned was to slope arms and salute and things like that. You don’t slope arms when you’re in the trenches, and you don’t salute officers when you’re in the trenches. You’ve something else to do. I did fire five rounds from a rifle, but I never was told where the five shots went to. It was only when I got in France that I found out I was a good shot. I went on a draft, and on the way over I met a lad called Theaker, and he’d been out before so I thought he was a good lad to cotton on to. He would know the ropes. We landed at Boulogne, marched up St Martin’s Hill to a transit camp, and Theaker said, ‘Right, we’ll find some place to kip for the night.’ I said, ‘There’s some huts up here with some wire beds in them.’ He said, ‘No, we’ll have a tent.’ Well, it was December you know, so I said, ‘Why a tent?’ He said, ‘Well, in France, if there’s as much as a pile of empty sandbags they’ll put a guard on it, and if I know the guard sergeant he’ll go to the first hut he comes to and say, “You, you, you and you, for Guard.” He’ll not come trailing round tents looking for one here and one there.’ So we settled down in this empty tent well down the lines. When it got to about half past nine, he said, ‘Guard comes on about ten o’clock and they warn them in good time, so we’re all right now.’
A few minutes later somebody opened the tent flap and said, ‘How many in there?’ Before I could answer, Theaker said, ‘Four of us.’ In came four packets of cigarettes – two packets of ‘Oro’ and two of ‘Beeswing’. I’d never seen them before, and I’ve never seen them since either. So I said to him, ‘Why did you shout “Four”? He said, ‘Well, you’re not grumbling, are you? You’ve got two packets of cigarettes where you’d only have had one. You’ve always got to be one jump ahead in France!’
Young Hare was a fast learner, and he had managed more or less successfully to keep one jump ahead of the Army ever since. He was soon to discover that keeping one jump ahead of the Germans was not so easy.
Although he was just nineteen and Private Hare’s junior by two years, Jim Aldous occupied a more elevated position in the 31st Division. For one thing he was an officer – and a Regular officer to boot, having been commissioned direct from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, more than two years earlier, at the tender age of seventeen. He had been chafing to get to France ever since, and had finally made it just five months previously, on reaching his nineteenth birthday. Aldous was posted as a full lieutenant to the 210th Field Company, the Royal Engineers, and this he considered to be a great stroke of luck. Although a company of sappers was attached to each brigade of the Division, 210 Company belonged to the Brigade of Guards and privately considered themselves to be a cut above the rest.
For the past five days, ever since the 31st Division had been rushed to the front, the Guards Brigade had been in the thick of the fighting, and, as the right wing of the Third Army was forced back, they had not had an easy time. They had stabilized the shaky front and attacked and counter-attacked to recapture lost ground, but slowly, inevitably, they had been gradually forced back – gassed out of the trenches which Aldous and his sappers had so laboriously dug, shelled out of strongpoints which they had constructed further back, and obliged to retire further still when the line on their right was forced. Back, back, back: from St Leger to Hamelincourt, Hamelincourt to Moyenneville, and from Mory to Ervillers and Courcelles. The sappers were as exhausted as the infantry – indeed, two nights earlier, they had been sent post-haste to the line and forced to play the part of infantry themselves. There were no other reserves. Jim Aldous was of a naturally optimistic disposition, but this was his lowest point.
Lieutenant Jim Aldous, MC, 210 Field Coy., Royal Engineers, 31st Division
We were to dig a line just south of Hamelincourt and hold it as infantry until we were relieved by the 92nd Brigade, who are retreating from the front line to the new line. The reason is that the Boche has got through on the south and is round our right flank, and so we were told to hold our line if he continued to advance on our right. We got off within fifteen minutes and marched to the site with two other field companies, each man taking one tin of bully beef, three biscuits, and 150 rounds of ammunition. We dug the line in record time, and then manned the trench. I wonder what would have happened to us if the Boche had come through, because we had no Very lights and no SOS rockets. He could have come within twenty yards of us without our seeing him. I had one NCO and three men out in front as a standing patrol, but I fancy he would have finished them off before we knew it. It was very cold indeed, and standing-to for five hours nearly finished us off. A large fire started on our right front and burnt the whole night. At twelve midnight our guns pulled out past the line we had dug and went away to the rear. We waited till 2 a.m. the following day without anyone relieving us. We then got word that the enemy had attacked again and the 92nd Brigade could not retire, so we were to march back.
We arrived at Monchy-au-Bois at 6 a.m. on the 26th, dead beat, and no one could have moved another mile, as we’d had practically no sleep for two days before. I went to sleep in my clothes within two minutes of getting in, and slept till 4.30 p.m., when I awoke feeling absolutely starved. We were just picketed out in a field, of course, and I learned that the Boche had been shelling us most of the day. He was certainly doing it when I woke, but no one took any notice. A thing like that seems so trivial compared to what is happening. Today I hear that the Guards and 92nd Brigade are holding the line we dug last night and have evacuated all in front of it, so the retreat is in full swing. We are all praying for rain, which apparently is the only thing that can hold him up on our right. We could have held him, but he is round on our right flank and a retreat is imperative. The roads are a tangled mass of ammunition columns and transport going west – everything is very confused – and no one knows where the Boche is on our flanks. It is really open warfare. However, we know one thing and that is that we are retreating.
Even under shell-fire and in the open air, a few hours’ sleep did a great deal to restore the sappers’ spirits. They were even happier when they learned that they were not required to work that night, and there was a general rush to find sleeping quarters in the village. Monchy-au-Bois, where the Brigade transport lines now were, had been well back from the front when the battle erupted on 21 March – so far back that many of the inhabitants who had been forced to flee the fighting before the front moved east in 1917 had been able to return to till their fields, to retrieve what was left in their battered dwellings, and to take up residence in huts erected by the French Relief Committee. It had been a sad sight to see them take to the road for a second time, carrying what they could of their salvaged possessions, but the sappers were only too pleased to move into the vacated huts. The walls were corrugated iron, lined inside with wooden planks, but each one contained three rooms, they were warm and dry and, in the circumstances, they seemed the height of luxury. They were full of unimaginable treasures, and, since these were not required at present by their rightful owners, the men felt no compunction about plundering them. Aldous and his fellow officers more or less confined themselves to food, and collected five rabbits, four hens, a sack of potatoes and sixty pounds of flour. They also acquired a sack of cement (a valuable commodity to the Royal Engineers) and some voluminous nightgowns. These were donned with much mutual ribbing, but they enabled the officers to take off their stiff and grimy uniforms and slumber in blissful comfort during the night.
Other troops in the vicinity were even less particular in their acquisitions, and a battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, enjoying a brief respite from the battle, were making the most of the unexpected windfall. In the morning, Jim Aldous was amused to see them passing in a long procession, wheeling barrows full of comestibles and domestic objets d’art for which they could have no conceivable use. Four men, making purposefully for the Koyli’s mess, were actually carrying a four-poster bed, removed from heaven knew what salubrious dwelling, and another marched past with what Aldous delicately described as ‘a most necessary article’ in each hand and with a feather boa draped rakishly round his neck.
Despite the blatant thievery, the bizarre spectacle was a welcome diversion – but soon there were other matters to engage their interest. Orders came through that there must be no more retreating and that the present line must be maintained ‘at all costs’. At 5.30 in the evening Aldous and his men set off to dig the Purple Line in front of Adinfer Wood – and the Purple Line was the line of last resort. In a few hours’ time Ludendorff would launch the Mars attack, and already the shell-fire was becoming more intense. Again 210 Field Company was ordered to hold the trench as infantry and to defend it, if need be, to the last.
Two fields ahead, the Guards Brigade was holding the front line in the village of Ayette. Behind the Guards there was no defence but the sketchy line the Royal Engineers had dug in front of Adinfer Wood, and no other troops but the sappers to man it.
Adinfer Wood lay in front of Monchy-au-Bois and not far behind Ayette astride a minor road running south from Arras through Puisieux to Serre – the village where the unblooded troops of the 31st Division had been decimated in the Battle of the Somme. The engineers had dug a line of strongpoints on the eastern outskirts of Ayette, with a support line of scratch trenches on its western edge. There the Guards were standing when morning came and Mars was unleashed.1
Curving slightly eastward as it ran north, the line ran west of Moyenneville, which the Germans had occupied the previous night. But, as Walter Hare was shortly to discover, it was hard to tell exactly where it ran.
We’d been up at Beuvry on rest, and when we’d first got there they gave us an extra bandolier of ammunition and another couple of grenades and said, ‘Right! Move forward till you meet somebody – our own troops or the Germans.’ So we went forward a couple of miles, and when we reached some British troops they told us, ‘We’ve come back three or four miles and there’s nobody in front of us but the Germans – but you’ll soon find out!’ And we did! We’d stuck it there about two days, and then we got orders to retire, because we couldn’t hold the trenches any longer, and we came back and back as far as Moyenneville. Then the Jerries got into that and we had to shove out of there. We weren’t far away from it on the morning of the 28th, and we were ordered to file up on to a sunken road and told we’d got to stay there. No more retreating. We’d got to hold that.
The shelling was terrible – an awful bombardment! – but we’d got quite good cover and I got myself dug into the embankment. And then the Germans got a machine-gun into a farmhouse on the left and they were shooting down the road at us. It was murder! There weren’t too many of us left by then, and we were losing more chaps all the time. There were some battalions on our left and some on our right, but the Jerries burst through on our left and got behind us, and they were firing into our backs. The only chap left alive near me was our Company Sergeant-Major, a chap called Cousins. He was an ex-policeman, a good chap from Beasley. He said to me, ‘Now, look, Walter, after the next burst of machine-gun fire we’ll run for it. We can’t stay here. We can’t do any good.’ So there was another burst of machine-gun fire down this road and the Sergeant-Major got up and ran, and he hadn’t gone far when I saw him go down. So I thought, ‘Well, that’s no good. It’s no use me going. I’d better stay here, and when it gets dark I’ll go.’ Suddenly I heard the Germans coming up, and the next thing I knew there was a chap going for me with his bayonet fixed, so I dropped my gun and put my hands up.
He shunted me out along the road, and when they got us together there were thirty-seven of us left out of the battalion. What was amazing to me was that my brother was there. I couldn’t believe it! I’d been told he’d been killed two days before, but he was still there, and he waved his hand to me and we got together. He was in the same battalion, but a different company. I was glad to see him. We were both very fed up at being captured, but it made it a bit better that we were together.
Well, they moved us back into an old quarry and they lined us up. I thought, ‘This is it. They’re going to shoot us now!’ However, an officer came along who spoke a bit of English, and he told us we were to go and fetch their wounded out and bring them back to this post, where some men were looking after them. First of all they took our field dressings off us, because they didn’t have any bandages except paper stuff. We spent the rest of the day doing that, and we didn’t know what was happening. I thought we’d lost the war!
They had not lost the war. They had not even lost the fight. Between Ayette and Arras, although here and there the Germans managed to push forward to gain a tentative toehold, and although in some parts of the front the line was drawn back to a position of greater advantage, the enemy made small headway. His gains were insignificant, but his losses were inordinate. Every attempt to advance had been repulsed; many more were thwarted before they began by British guns bombarding the German troops as they massed behind their line.
Beyond Arras, at the northern extremity of the Mars assault, the 56th Division, which had not yet been attacked, was standing on the line it had held for many months. There had been ample time to strengthen it, and a line of strong outposts ran in front of the battle zone between Gavrelle and Arleux. The work had gone on until almost the last minute, and Harry Goodby of the London Scottish was heartily thankful that the Germans had not chosen to attack twenty-four hours earlier. Had they done so he would have been in trouble. The London Scottish were in the support line, but the night before last a working party had gone out to repair damaged wire at one of the strongpoints in the forefront of the line and, as stretcher-bearers, Goodby and a comrade had gone with them, in case of casualties.
Private Harry Goodby, 14th (County of London) Bn. (London Scottish), The London Regt., 56th (London) Division
We stretcher-bearers were told to stay in a disused trench about a hundred yards from the wire, and there was a small dugout built into the parapet with a tarpaulin curtain in front of it. It was big enough to hold two men, and we were told to stay there and that we would be called if we were wanted; otherwise we would be picked up by the wiring party on their way back to the support line when they’d finished. We got to the shelter about ten o’clock, and we should have got back to our lines about midnight. Of course there was nothing for us to do, and we dropped off to sleep.
I was suddenly wakened up by voices above our heads. Naturally I thought it was our party coming back, and then I realized that the voices were speaking German! I knew that we would be in trouble, because stretcher-bearers don’t carry rifles, so we were quite helpless. My pal was still fast asleep, and he was snoring something awful, so I clapped my hands round his mouth and whispered to him to keep quiet. I just hoped and prayed the Germans wouldn’t come down into the trench, but ten minutes passed – they seemed like hours! – and the voices stopped. After it had been quiet for a while, I pulled the ground-sheet aside to have a look, and I found to my amazement that it was nearly daylight. It was about four o’clock in the morning! Luckily we knew the way back to our lines, but we were only about 200 yards away from the German front line and we could easily have been spotted. There was a very shallow trench running back, so we crawled along it and eventually, and with a lot of difficulty, we got back. You can imagine how we felt when we heard that the wiring party had returned at midnight and they’d forgotten all about us! The lookouts had seen the German patrol very close to our wire and they thought we must have gone west – and we jolly nearly did!
That was a terrible part of the line, in front of Oppy Wood and Gavrelle. The Royal Naval Division had attacked there the year before, and their bodies were still hanging on the wire where they’d been caught up. The trench that was now our support line was called Naval Trench. That was their jumping-off point. It was most depressing to see these bodies everywhere.
1498 Corporal Douglas Pankhurst, Stokes Mortar Section, 56th (London) Division
When our Stokes-mortar section went up there we had to dig pits for our weapon, and we were digging through bodies. It was dreadful. There were bones and parts of bodies everywhere, but the awful thing was to see some still hanging on the German wire. Somehow it wasn’t real. I don’t know if it’s because I was young, but I don’t think at any time in the war I ever felt it was real. I suppose you blocked it out, because it was the only way you could do your job.
We were a small unit, only twenty-five strong, and we had one senior officer – a captain – two second lieutenants, one sergeant and four corporals. I seldom saw an officer or a sergeant in the line, and consequently I was my own kingpin. The Stokes was a sixty-pound mortar shaped like an aerial torpedo and they could only be flung a short distance, so we were always close up to the front line.
That day, 28 March, we’d been relieved the night before the attack. Then the bombardment started at dawn, and the overriding impression that lasts with me today is the noise, the incessant bombardment that went on for hours. They had thousands of guns on that front, all firing away, and machine-guns rattling. The noise was terrific, and yet, you know, it still wasn’t real. About nine o’clock in the morning the OC came to me and said, ‘I want you to go up to the reserve pits. The Germans have attacked and run over our line.’ I took my men up with me and we got to a sunken road, and a couple of wounded officers came along and said, ‘You can’t get through. He’s got a machine-gun barrage on the sunken road.’ They were also shelling badly, and the fellows began to get a bit extra windy, and I can remember doing a silly thing. I’m not boasting, because I never felt it was me walking around. I did my job, of course – in battle you do your job. When you’re scared you do it automatically – partly through training, partly through discipline, but mostly, I think, through self-pride. It’s difficult to describe. Anyway, I got on top and said, ‘Look, it’s not hurting me. Come on.’ And we went and we got through. We were below the angle of fire, and I knew that the trajectory was such that they’d never get us.
Anyhow, we got into the reserve pit. I rolled back the camouflage, got the mortar ready, got the bombs ready, and then I got them to get hold of my heels and hold me up to the ramp so that I could see over the top of the pit. When I looked over I saw a sight which I’ll never forget. It was the London Scottish advancing in open order with fixed bayonets, just as if they were going for a country walk. They were dropping and dropping as they went, the guns were firing, the shells were bursting, the machine-guns were going, and they just went on. It was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen, awe-inspiring, and yet it would nearly break your heart. I used to have The Times sent out to me, and I always remember the headline. It said, ‘Hoch the London Territorials.’ We were the only part that held the line. The Germans came over with spare boots and rations for a week. They took our front line. They might have taken the second line, but we held them.
The London Scottish were in support to the 4th Royal Fusiliers in the front line. When the attack broke and the outposts were overrun, Sergeant Frank Udall was a short distance behind them, at Advanced Company Headquarters. Before the war Udall had followed the undistinguished occupation of clerk to the Islington branch of the Conservative Association, and in 1914, when Germans were popularly supposed to be lurking behind every bush, he began his active service by guarding the railway station at Surbiton. Now he was a soldier to the backbone, a mainstay of the Battalion, a senior NCO who had proved his worth in half a dozen battles and had won the Military Medal in the Battle of the Somme. Before the day was out he would have earned another.1
Sergeant Frank Udall, MM and 2 bars, 4th Bn., Royal Fusiliers, 56th (London) Division
We knew they were coming, because we’d made a raid the night before. Lieutenant Capley led it, and when he got in the German trench he went to fire his revolver and it wouldn’t work, so he had a stand-up fight with the Jerry. He got a punch in the jaw and his teeth were all bashed in, but he got back, and they got a prisoner and all the information. So we knew it was coming and when. There was the front-line post and eighty yards behind it is us, and behind us is two or three Vickers machine-guns. So Jerry starts his bombardment with big trench mortars. Awful things they are! You think every one’s going to hit you! But our artillery’s opening up, I can tell you! Anyway, Jerry comes over. Well, there was nothing I could do but what I had done. I’d taken a load of bandoliers, and these bandoliers are divided into sections with about fifty rounds of ammo in them, five in each section, so I’d been taking the bullets out from every other section and laid them on the bandoliers on the fire-step ready for the men to man the trench. I also saw that all the grenades were fused up and ready.
Jerry didn’t do much when he came over. He came on a bit, but he didn’t do much. Of course the forward post went and we had to go back a bit, but only so as we could fight. The idea was to get at least eighty yards back from the line we were in, so that he can’t reach that far with his own grenades, but to pick a straight trench if possible, so that you can easily hold it by a rifle. So we did that. I gathered a couple of snipers and got them to lie on top of the trench to cover us, and in this bit of trench I was on my own with a little chap, Lance-Corporal Taylor, who’d managed to get back from the post and attached himself to me.
We had a bag of grenades, so we put them down, and when I looked round there’s two Jerries coming into the trench taking aim at us. How they missed us, God Almighty knows! I supposed they must have been just as bloody scared as we were. Just where we were in the trench – and this is a good trench remember, well built – there’s a box built into the parapet, with room enough for the bombers to take aim and throw their bombs, and this is where training comes in. Neither of us said a word. We just dived into the box together and from that bit of shelter we started chucking bombs along the trench towards these Jerries. Well, we got rid of the two in the trench, but from where I was I could see a Jerry officer out in front pointing us out to his machine-gun crew. The snipers on the top soon picked him off, but I thought to myself, ‘Now, he’s in front over there, and he’s in the rear too, so it’s about time we hopped back for safety.’
As I started getting back, I met Major Philips and he said, ‘Retire, and get your lads back to the Canadians.’ (The Canadian line was just on our left, because we were on the very left flank of our division.) This is about eleven o’clock in the morning now, and by rights we should have retired two or three hours before. We were completely cut off. There were some poor buggers trying to get through to us, but Jerry had got round the rear, and they were running into him every time, so we had to hang on entirely on our own. We had no gunfire, except the machine-guns. Of course the big guns were firing ahead of us and, my God, they really done good work. They smashed them up. We had to go back – we had no choice. But the Germans only got three hundred yards. I honestly believe it was the turning point of the war. I honestly do believe that.
When we got out of the trench, the Germans were firing heavy, so we lay in a shell-hole for a time, and lying there was Captain Duffey of C Company, badly wounded in the chest. Sergeant-Major James asked me if I could get one of my sergeants to bring him back with us, so I went and got a sergeant, and he gold hold of four men and a duckboard to carry him to the trench we were making for. While we were retiring across the open to the Canadians on our left, I looked back and I saw a German who looked like an officer approaching the sergeant and the four fellows carrying our officer on the duckboard, so I thought that was the end for them, but a little while after we got back to the trench, the sergeant arrived with the four men, officer, duckboard and all! I saw him sent off to an aid post, and then I asked the sergeant what had happened. I thought the sergeant must have taken the German officer prisoner, but he said, ‘No! The German officer spoke English and he asked me what we were doing, and I said we were stretcher-bearers. Then he pointed to the rifles I was carrying – two on one shoulder and three on the other – and he laughed. But he looked at the officer and he saw the DSO ribbon on his tunic, and he said, “A brave officer! Is he badly wounded?” I told him he was and we were taking him back to our line. Then he said, “Go ahead. You can take him back. We will not fire on you.” So here we are.’ I was impressed by that. I’ll never forget it. That German officer was certainly a good bloke.
Another chap who done good that day was Private Goodman. He was a barman from Shoreditch, and he was the cook for our company – one of the few who used to do the cooking in the front line on a charcoal fire. Company HQ was going to have rabbit that day, and when Goodman knew Jerry was coming he trod it all into the floor of the dugout – trampled all the basins into the floor so Jerry wouldn’t get it. And when he did get there Goodman had a fight on top of the trench. Fisticuffs – a real set-to! He was captured, but he made sure they didn’t get our rabbit. And they didn’t get much else either! It was the turning point of the war.
It was not precisely the turning point of the war, but the Germans had suffered a serious setback. By late afternoon, after the gallant counter-attack by the London Scottish, the fighting died down, but there was no guarantee that it would not be renewed next day. Huge amounts of ammunition had been used up, and more was urgently wanted. As soon as it was dark the transport section of the London Rifle Brigade was ordered to take fresh supplies to the line. For the men leading the mules it was an eerie journey.
Rifleman A. Smith, 5th (City of London) Bn. (London Rifle Bde.), The London Regt., 56th (London) Division
Apart from various stretchers being brought down from the shambles ahead of us, we had the track to ourselves. Presently the track led us on to a road, where we halted beside some sandbagged dugouts, which represented the Brigade bomb store. A sergeant in charge of our convoy promptly roused the occupants of the dugouts for the purpose of loading our ponies – much to the men’s annoyance, for they had obviously had a very trying day of it up here.
At long last we moved forward, threading our way among shell-holes. What a deluge of shells this road had received! Fritz’s enthusiasm for the road had very luckily cooled down by nightfall, and no one could complain of a few crumps. Jerry seemed to have spent himself that day, and he must have had a nasty knock.
Our convoy turned up a little sunken lane, where quite a number of our division were manning improvised fire-steps. The Germans had got nearly as far as this during the day.
‘It’s the finest day in the history of the regiment,’ said a sergeant. ‘There’s not many of ’em left, but we’ve killed simply thousands with bombs and rifle fire and Lewis-guns. Fritz hasn’t got a kick left in him.’
The few of them that were left (about ninety in all) were worn out with killing. Practically no one remained even in HQ to remind one even of 1916, let alone 1914. Among the rank and file, the transport section was now absolutely the last remnant of the old battalion.
But Mars North, like Mars South on the other side of Arras, had failed, and, despite Prince Rupprecht’s desire to renew the battle, Ludendorff called it off. His gamble had failed, and he knew it. Years later he wrote:
The 17th Army had already attacked in the last days of March in the direction of Arras, making its principal effort on the north bank of the Scarpe. It was to capture the decisive heights east and north of Arras; the next day the 6th Army was to prolong the attack from about Lens and carry the high ground in that area. I attached the greatest importance to both these attacks. To have the high ground in our possession was bound to be decisive in any fighting in the plain of the Lys. In spite of employing extraordinary masses of artillery and ammunition, the attack of the 17th Army on both banks of the Scarpe was a failure; it fought under an unlucky star.
And, despite some small tactical gains further south, where the French and the British were proving to be so irritatingly obdurate, it was becoming apparent that the great sweeping victory on which he had staked so much would not be easily won.
Although it was against his own tactical judgement and appraisal of the situation, General Gough was anxious to comply with Foch’s demand that his army should hold its ground come what may, but there had been another slight withdrawal during the previous night and some troops had come perilously close to being cut off. Even now the danger had not been wholly averted. Gough had spent the afternoon away from his headquarters, visiting his commanders in the field and making personal contact with General Mesple, in command of the newly arrived French force which was not yet fully organized. When he returned to Dury, a visitor was waiting in the mess, where the mess stewards were serving tea. It was General Ruggles-Brise, Haig’s military secretary. He was a kindly unassuming man, whom Gough knew and liked, but, despite his bluff and genial welcome, Ruggles-Brise seemed preoccupied and ill at ease. He had an unpleasant message to deliver, and it was obvious that he did not relish the prospect. He asked to see General Gough alone, and Gough, still unsuspecting, led him into an ante-room. Ruggles-Brise spoke quietly. ‘The Chief asked me to tell you that he thinks you and your staff are very tired after all these days of struggle, and he has decided to replace you by Rawlinson and his staff.’
Gough was more than surprised – he was dumbfounded. At face value the decision could be interpreted as a considerate act on the part of the Commander-in-Chief; but, although it was cloaked in kindly terms, General Gough was too wily a bird and too well versed in the gentlemanly etiquette of the military hierarchy not to realize its full import. He knew he was being sacked. Ruggles-Brise had no more to say, but as he took his leave he put all the sympathy he could muster into his handshake.
Schooled by long years of discipline and duty, Gough made a monumental effort to hide his feelings of dismay and soften the blow for his staff. But the shame of it was almost insupportable. The soldiering to which he had dedicated his life was bred in the bone. Both his father and his uncle had won the Victoria Cross, and his father had commanded a force in the Afghan War. In 1900, during the Boer War, Gough himself had led the force which relieved Ladysmith. By that time he was a seasoned soldier. At seventeen and a half he had been the youngest cadet at Sandhurst, and he was commissioned into the 16th Lancers on 5 March 1889. It was the anniversary of the Battle of Barossa, in which, seventy-eight years earlier to the very day, his great-grandfather, fighting under Wellington, had led the 87th Irish Fusiliers to victory. It was part of the Gough family legend, for Lord Gough had led them with the battle-cry ‘Faugh-a-ballaugh!’ It meant ‘Clear the way!’ The battle-cry had been proudly adopted by the troops as their motto – and no less proudly by the Gough family as theirs. Hubert Gough did not regard his dismissal as humiliation: to the scion of such a family as his it was little short of degradation – and he was stricken to the heart. As soldier to soldier, he did not blame Haig, who was well known for his exceptional loyalty to colleagues and subordinates. Gough could only guess at the pressures which had forced the Commander-in-Chief to remove him.
He stayed to welcome General Rawlinson and to formally hand over command, but he left as soon as he could decently get away. He had no idea where he was expected to eat or to sleep that night, but, as a homing pigeon returns to its loft, he made for the British GHQ, where the camp commandant found him a billet. Field-Marshal Haig was kind to him and did his best to mollify his old friend. ‘I need you, Hubert,’ he said. He explained that he wanted Gough and his staff out of the line so that they could reconnoitre the Somme valley from Amiens to the sea and prepare a system of defence – adding that, if the French did not hold on, it might be necessary for the British Army to retreat to it. ‘I must have a Reserve Army staff,’ he emphasized.
Gough had no choice but to acquiesce. Although he knew, in his heart of hearts, that the gesture was a sop to his pride, he was too sore and aggrieved to appreciate the consideration of the Commander-in-Chief. He was inwardly convinced that the only ‘failure’ which could be laid at his door was his failure to conform to the plans of the Germans. Had he obliged the Fifth Army to stand and fight until it was overwhelmed by the might of the enemy’s attack, he would have played precisely the role Ludendorff intended. Its strength was horribly diminished, but the Fifth Army was still intact. It had checked the enemy at every stage of its slow retirement, gaining time for reinforcements to reach the line and seriously weakening the resources of the German Army. Ludendorff had undoubtedly been forced to use up quantities of men and munitions many times greater than those he would have expended had Gough chosen to stand his ground and thereby commit his army to heroic annihilation. In later years Ludendorff himself was of much the same opinion.
General Rawlinson’s first act on taking over command of the Fifth Army was to send an urgent message to General Foch. It was timed at 6.30 p.m. on 28 March, and it was blunt and to the point:
The situation is serious, and unless fresh troops are sent here in the next two days, I doubt whether the remnants of the British XIX Corps which now hold the line to the east of Villers-Bretonneux can maintain their positions. The XVIII Corps has been pulled out; a few of its troops which were not relieved by the French are being transferred to the command of the XIX Corps. I feel some anxiety for the security of Amiens, and draw your attention to the danger in which this place will be if the enemy renews his attacks from the east before fresh troops are available …1
The long spell of fine weather had broken, and before dark the rain that had been falling intermittently for most of the day had become a steady downpour. It did nothing to raise the spirits of the troops as they settled down for a miserable night. Outside Adinfer Wood, Jim Aldous and his company were ordered to remain in the trench they had dug, in case the attack should be renewed.
Lieutenant Jim Aldous, MC (diary entry – 29 March 1918)
The trenches were soon in a most atrocious condition! We spent the night in abject misery, as the rain could not be kept out. We placed wooden sleepers over the top of the trench to make a roof as best we could. The trench was three feet broad and three feet deep, and we sat in the bottom with our backs to the wall in mud about a foot deep. My revolver sank in the mud when I put it down and nodded off. When I woke up I was too exhausted to plunge my arm into the mud and grope for it. But the rain will have one good effect – it will tend to hold up the advance of the Boche. The luck he has had with offensives makes me really believe he is in league with Gott – or the Devil!
Close to Albert, where the 35th Division was on the right of the Australians, General Marandin made the rounds of his troops and hailed Major Harrison Johnston with surprising cheerfulness. ‘Well, Johnston, still merry and bright?’ Coming from a colleague of lower rank, these words might well have met with an unprintable reply, but Johnston answered politely, though with little enthusiasm, that they were all in good form and as merry and bright as the circumstances permitted. But, since the circumstances referred to had required him to occupy a sump-hole as Battalion Headquarters, he was not much amused by the General’s greeting.
Captain Harrison Johnston, 15th (Service) Bn., The Cheshire Regt., 35th Division
Rain was coming through the riddled piece of old tarpaulin which served as a roof. If you leaned against the sides, earth came down your neck, and the civilian mattress meant for sleeping purposes was sodden. As soon as relief was complete I set off round the front line. The men were remarkably cheery, and asked me questions like, ‘Are we winning, Sir?’ ‘Did you see old No. 7 Platoon get those six Boches trying to work round the flank?’ ‘Any chance of cigarettes in the next rations, Sir?’ Ye gods! the guts of the British soldier are wonderful.
I found old Milne had put his men out all right. I went round his outposts with him, and they were mostly good. As we were returning we saw some small parties in front of our right flank moving towards the Hun line. Milne explained to me that these were Australians, who were pushing their line forward about 250 yards. They were shouting to each other as if there was no enemy for miles! The Boche outpost line was only three or four hundred yards away. Machine-guns opened on them and they got down, but they carried on a little later. Milne was highly amused and told me that the OC company on his right had been round to see him to inform him that he proposed to move his line forward during the night to shorten the joint frontage. He said, ‘I don’t have any of these red-hat fellows arranging where I sit. I go out and choose the sites, put the boys there, and then tell Brigade where we are.’ The question of flanks did not seem to interest him much. He told the people on each side what he had done and said it was then up to them to conform or not, as they thought best. He’d looked after his bit. These Australians were a wonderful lot of fellows, and didn’t care a row of pins for anything or anybody.
I went along the railway and found things OK. I then went to a little farmhouse, where the two forward companies there had their HQ. It was a topping place, though the CO of the Lancashire Fusiliers who we relieved thought it was too far forward for Battalion HQ. I decided to move in at once. I got back to the sump-hole about 3.30 a.m. and found old Binks sleeping peacefully in the mud and water. I told him of my find, and ten minutes later HQ were moving forward 1,000 yards.
Not far away across the rain-soaked battlefield the German soldiers were no better off, and they had not had a satisfactory day.
Musketier Hans Schetter, 3rd Coy., 231st Reserve Infantry Regt., 50th [German] Reserve Division
We are about one kilometre from Dernancourt when the English artillery starts to fire at us and shells continuously crash into the houses of the village. All day long 230th Regiment is engaged in heavy fighting for the bridge over the Ancre, and especially for a railroad spur on the Albert–Amiens–Paris line. But the Tommy defends his line tenaciously. Some of our wounded passing to the rear tell us about the terrific English machine-gun fire. Our divisional chaplain, a Lutheran pastor, helps to look after the badly wounded, and our regimental doctor puts on emergency bandages.
We put tarpaulins over a hole we have dug for ourselves in the chalk soil. It has started to rain again, and we creep together here to spend the night. Enemy shells crash down around us all night and we have little protection – just a tarpaulin.
It was exactly one week since the German boys had been exulting in the achievements of the first day’s fighting and Schetter and his companions, replete with British rations, had been savouring the luxury of soft, new woollen socks. They had come a long way since then, but there was a new sense of anticlimax in the air. It was no doubt due to the unpleasant change in the weather, but, nevertheless, some German soldiers had an uneasy feeling that they might not get much further.
Leutnant Rudolf Binding
Today the advance of our infantry suddenly stopped near Albert. Nobody could understand why. Our way seemed entirely clear. When I asked the Brigade Commander why there was no movement forward, he shrugged his shoulders and said he did not know either. I turned round at once and took a sharp turn with the car into Albert. As soon as I got near the town I began to see curious sights. There were men driving cows before them, others who carried a hen under one arm and a box of notepaper under the other. Men carrying a bottle of wine under one arm and another one open in their hand. Men dressed up in comic disguise with top hats on their heads. Men staggering. Men who could hardly walk. The streets were running with wine. Out of a cellar came a lieutenant of the Second Marine Division, helpless and in despair. I asked him, ‘What is going to happen?’ He replied, ‘I cannot get my men out of this cellar without bloodshed.’
I drove back to Divisional HQ with a fearful impression of the situation. The advance was held up, and there was no means of getting it going again for hours. When I considered what was happening up in front it seemed to me to be merely a magnified expression of the passion and craving which we were all experiencing. Yesterday an officer sitting beside me in the car suddenly called out to the driver to stop at once, without so much as asking my leave. When I asked him in astonishment what he meant by stopping the car when we were on an urgent mission, he answered, ‘I must just pick up that English waterproof lying beside the road.’ He jumped out, seized an English waterproof which lay on the bank, and then jumped joyfully back again.
If this lack of restraint seized an officer like that, one can imagine what effect it must have on the private soldier. In the case of the officer it was the waterproof which tempted him to forget his important duties. With the private soldiers it was the coloured picture-postcard, the silk curtain, the bottle of wine, the chicken or the cow – but in most cases the wine.
But there was one private soldier who had coveted a British overcoat. It belonged to the commanding officer of the 2nd West Yorks, and it was politely but insistently removed from his shoulders by one of the Germans who captured him that afternoon. Colonel Lowry was caught when his battalion was ordered to retire from the line at Moreuil, and it was a stroke of bad luck, because even under heavy shelling all the rest of the battalion had got safely away. The Colonel had sent them off in twos and threes until only he himself and two orderlies were left. Unfortunately, as they left the trench and prepared to make a dash for it, they came face to face with an enemy machine-gun team and were promptly taken prisoner.
In view of the weather, the German soldier who appropriated the Colonel’s overcoat was kind enough to offer him his Army-issue rain-cape in exchange, and as the rain grew heavier Lowry was glad to put it on. There were many prisoners – perhaps too many for the Germans to handle – and at dusk the group which included Colonel Lowry was briefly left unguarded. Seizing his chance, he slipped across the road, hid behind a potato heap on the other side, and lurked there until the prisoners were herded on. He found that he was on the edge of a shell-pocked field, littered with battle debris. It included an abandoned German helmet, which the Colonel promptly grabbed. He stuck it on his head and waited. Presently an enemy transport column lumbered along the road and, relying on rain and poor light to make up for the deficiencies of his disguise, and hoping to give the impression that he had merely left the column to answer a call of nature, Lowry strode out from behind his shelter and tagged on to a contingent of men marching behind the wagons. They marched in silence, heads bent against the driving rain, but occasionally a man at his side uttered a remark which seemed to require an answer. Given the circumstances and the tone of voice, the Colonel assumed that his companion was not extolling the joys of a soldier’s lot. His entire knowledge of German consisted of two words – ‘Nicht wahr.’ He was almost sure that this phrase implied agreement, but as he was not quite sure enough to take the risk he responded, when necessary, with a morose grunt, and depended on his confident bearing, the kindly darkness and the rain to get away with it.
He did get away with it as far as a crossroads near Villers-Bretonneux. Then, suspecting that German traffic-control police might not be so easily deceived by his disguise, he lagged behind, ambled to the side of the road as if nature was again insistent, and made his escape across the fields. It was almost dawn when Lowry reached the British lines, soaked, muddy and extremely tired, but delighted by his escapade.
He was probably the only man, British or German, who had been out all night in the streaming rain who was entirely happy.